I'm a geochemist. In the past ten years I've fixed mass spectrometers, blasted sapphires with a laser beam, explored for uranium in a nature reserve, and measured growth patterns in fish ears, and helped design the next generation of the world's most advanced ion probe. My main interest is in-situ mass spectrometry, but I have a soft spot in my heart for thermodynamics, drillers, and cosmochemistry.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Friday morning, a large meteor entered the atmosphere over
the southern Ural area of Russia,
detonating with enough force to shatter windows in nearby towns and injure over
1000 people. Preliminary estimates suggest
an impactor traveling at 15 to 20 km/s, and weighing 8000 to 10,000 tons,
exploding at an altitude of 20-30 km with the force of a nuclear weapon.

These are hard numbers to wrap one’s head around.

Let’s start with the size. There are numerous reports around
on the bolide being “bus sized.” But buses are not made of solid rock, so this is deceptive. In this situation,
mass is more important than dimensions. A bus weighs about 15-20 tons. That’s a
lot less than 8000-10,000. For example,
8000-10,000 tons is the approximate size of the naval destroyer USS Cole, which
was famously attacked by Al Qaeda in Yemen in 2000. It’s a lot bigger
than a bus. Of course, that ship doesn't fly in space. Rather, it sails in the ocean at about 50 km/
hour, thousands of times slower than 20 km/ second. The International Space
Station is about 450 tons.

Orbital velocity for a low earth orbit is about 8 km/second,
and reentry speeds returning from low earth orbit are similar. So this meteor was traveling at about twice
orbital speed when it hit the atmosphere.
This is substantially faster than the 11 km/s reentry of the Apollo missions
returning from the moon, and about twice as fast as the space shuttles (and
other low earth orbit spacecraft) re-enter.
It is about 50 times faster than a handgun bullet.

The total energy released, between a quarter and a half a
megaton, was similar to a modern H-bomb.
However, it was more dispersed, and released high in the atmosphere.
Because the impactor was traveling at twice orbital speed, the energy would be
equivalent to an orbital object of four times the mass re-entering. 32,000 to 40,000 tons is about the size of
the Titanic, or a WWII battleship.

Something similar to this has been imagined. Below is a model of CV-6, the famous 20,000
ton WWII aircraft carrier Enterprise.

Compare that to the fictional NCC 1701 spaceship enterprise,
at the same scale.

The internet gives a spaceship mass of 10 times the aircraft
carrier, which seems way to heavy to be sensible.

If we say the spaceship is twice the mass of the aircraft
carrier (it is bigger, after all, even if it is also probably made from a
lighter & stronger material than steel), then it would have about the same energy on
re-entry as the Chelyabinsk
bolide.

We can compare the videos:

Star Trek III

Chelyabinsk Friday morning:

Reality is still far more gripping than imagination.

Finally, here is what the Earth looked like from the
asteroid’s point of view an hour before impact.
A few things to note:

First, the Earth is almost full. As a result, the side of Earth facing the
asteroid was in day, so it would have been hard to spot, as the sun was behind it. However, the US
space junk tracking radars in Hawaii
should have been able to pick it up. I
wonder if they did, if they passed any sort of a warning on, or even are they
allowed to? It would be a shame if the
1200 injuries that occurred were preventable, but for American government red tape.

Disclaimer:

All opinions, measurements, figures, and facts on this page are the personal opinions of Charles W. Magee, Jr, and do not represent the views of any of his employers: past, present, present-but-about-to-be-past, or future. None of the content herein has been subject to peer review, and should be treated with caution or derision. Any passing mention of OSHA code violations, criminal activities, unethical or unscientific behavior, or the clandestine Australian nuclear weapons program are fictions created to make rhetorical points, and do not represent the reality of my, or anyone else's, workplace. Do not attempt any scientific protocols described herein at home, with the exception of the chocolate chip cookie recipe. Do not apply the products of that protocol to individuals with heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or cholesterol, egg, wheat, dairy, or chocolate allergies. Do not view this blog continuously for more than 45 minutes without stretching and taking other precautions to prevent computer-related chronic injury.
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